Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force by Michael Reaves Page A

her eyes. “Yes. Yes, I can see. That much raw power would have to be trained, controlled, channeled.” She smiled again and shook her head, sending the light dancing through her hair. “You certainly have your work cut out for you, young Jedi Master.”
    Jax flushed. “I’m not a Jedi Master. Barely a Jedi Knight. But you’re right—I do have my work cut out for me. I’m going to have to train Kajin Savaros to be a Jedi, whether I’m up to it or not.”
    “What’s the matter with you?”
    At the sound of the mechanical voice, Den turned to find that I-Five had entered his room on silent droid feet.
    “What’s the matter with
me?
I was gonna ask what you thought was the matter with everybody
else
around here. Well, not everybody. Just Jax and—well
—you
, not to put too fine a point on it.”
    “Ah. Of course there’s never anything wrong with you, is there? You’re Den Dhur, the journalist. You observe all and are touched by nothing.”
    Well, that took the scathing prize. “Look, you mean-spirited bucket of bolts, I’ve never claimed to be untouched or completely objective or any of that nonsense. Any journalist who claims he’s impartial or uncaring or uninvolved has got hash for brains, is lying to himself andthe Universal Mind,
and
is betraying the very purpose for which he became a journalist in the first place. A jaded journalist is a journalist who should frippin’ retire.” He paused to take a breath. “
I
should frippin’ retire.”
    I-Five managed to make his stationary metal eyebrow ridges look as if they had arched in feigned surprise. “Really? I should say you’re too far from jaded for that. Something has obviously set you in a high dudgeon.”
    Den stared at the droid, wondering if this was a golden opportunity to spill his guts and receive reassurance, or just a solid-brass opportunity to look like a complete idiot.
    “It’s that Duare woman. She’s—she’s …”
    “Yes, yes, I caught the childish mutterings. That’s nothing new. This is.”
    Den crossed to his bed and threw himself onto it, folding his hands behind his head and staring up at the duracrete ceiling. It had, at some point in its existence, been painted a soothing shade of gray-green that reminded him of the color of the cavern ceilings back home on Sullust. He could be there, he realized for the thousandth time, reclining on a formcouch in his own cave, having a peaceful conversation with Eyar and not in enemy territory, hiding out in a dive, staring with nostalgia at a ceiling, and having a frustrating dialogue with a protocol droid.
    What had he been thinking when he decided to stay here on Coruscant? Oh well, he knew what he’d been thinking—that I-Five would never leave Jax and that he would never leave I-Five. Jax was Five’s—what, adopted nephew? Adopted
son?
How twisted was that?
    No more twisted, he supposed, than that his best friend in the whole universe was made of metal and had a synaptic grid network instead of a cerebral cortex.
    “Well?” said his best friend in the whole universe, looking and sounding arch.
    Den sat up. “In case you hadn’t noticed, our young Jedi has brought home a stray human. A potentially dangerous stray human. I don’t know if you caught the subtext of what Jax was saying—or, rather, trying
not
to say—but I did.”
    “The boy is being sought by the Inquis—”
    “Not that.
We’re
being sought by the Inquisitors. The boy is freakishly powerful and untrained.”
    I-Five cocked his head to one side. “He’s a raw talent, yes.”
    Den sighed. “Are you being intentionally obtuse, Five, or have you fried some capacitors? Jax and Laranth are very careful about when and how they use the Force—around our neighborhood, especially. Our houseguest apparently drew the Inquisitor to him through an injudicious use of the Force. Who’s to say he won’t suffer a similar breach of protocol here?”
    “Jax.”
    Den opened his mouth to protest that Jax was not